I did it all for her, and though it could be the last thing I will ever do, I would do it again. 

Again and again. Never wavering. Never taking a different step. Always on the same path. One doomed foot in front of the other, keeping my eyes and my hat low, hoping that they will keep their promise. 

She was my little darlin’. The apple of my eye. My whole world. I’d tear it all down just to keep her safe. It was something I never expected, you know. I never thought I’d be the kind of man to give it all up for anybody, and yet, here I am, step after step, sinking further and further into sacrifice, for her. 

I walk this endless night, knowing that I will never be free. The night knows it too, and it knows of my pain. Loves it, even. 

My boots feel heavy, but I can’t stop. 

If I stop, I have nothing left. 

I don’t got much of nothin’ you see. Never needed it. I had my daughter, and a roof over my head, and I never wanted more than that. She’d play in the front yard, making up stories with her dolls and singing little songs to the shining sky. 

She was such a happy little girl. That’s how I remember her. I don’t even know if she remembers me. Maybe it hurts her too much. She pictures me in different ways. I’ve been different faces and different voices, because she was so young the last time she saw me. 

She blames herself, but she was just a child. Maybe it was nobody’s fault? Maybe it was her Mother? Maybe it was me? Maybe it was some grand, great design? Who knows.

I wanted us to go away to the country, back where I was raised. I thought it might be good for my little one to have some fresh air, and truthfully, there was a selfishness to it. I hated life in the city. I hated my stupid, stuffy office at work. I hated dinner parties and all the dainty, decorative bullshit that my wife filled the house with. I hated traffic jams, talk radio and suits. I hated having to mind my P’s and Q’s around her fancy friends, while she spent my paycheque at fuckin’ Pottery Barn. I hated how no matter how much I changed myself, every one of those stuck up snobs looked down their noses at me.

Not one bit of that life suited me, but once upon a time, I fell in love with a city girl, and it all went downhill from there. 

I begged Cee to let us go back home, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She had never liked visiting my family. Said it was so dull and dreary. I suppose I understand, because her heaven was my hell too, but I often wonder if our daughter would have been better off out of the city, or even, come to think of it, out of her mother’s clutches. 

There was a sickness that seeped into my little girl, some time after we lost each other. Her Mother was already infected and infested with it, and she passed it on to my daughter. Told her all these silly stories about some Goddess in the sky, trees and plants… except, they weren’t stories. 

Sometimes, I wish that Celia had just been insane, but that was only half of her problem. All the silly stories, her beliefs, her bloodlust, it all came from Invierno. She was right, and she bet her soul on it, as well as our daughter’s. I was collateral damage, I guess. I don’t even think she realised that she did it. It was over as quickly as it began. Once the madness took hold of her, she couldn’t be saved, and I wasn’t there to save my little girl. 

It wasn’t my choice, of course, but all the same, soon April was lost to the madness too, just like her Mother. 

I was long gone by that point. I tried to reach her, but for the longest time, I had been wrapped up in weeds and vines, choking and screaming to nobody in particular as the night wore on. Just an endless, empty night, with no company, no hope of rescue, nothing. I don’t know what I did to end up there, beyond dying at the hands of a woman who served a cruel mistress, but it was hell. An eternal, hopeless hell, with nothing to do but cry, scream and wonder when it would end. 

I thought that it was all there was, but I was wrong. It turns out that I was wrong about a lot of things. 

I can’t tell you when or how, but at some point, as I was struggling through another night of endless, unearned torment, I saw a gate up ahead. So far away, miles and miles, in fact. I could barely make it out, at first, but I really focused, and as I squinted, struggling through the pain, I saw it clearly. 

I started to wonder what was behind it. Perhaps a path to heaven? Perhaps some way back to the land of the living. The distraction helped, and the more I thought, the stronger I felt. I needed to open the gate. I needed to see what was hiding behind it. I needed to know if I had a chance to see my little girl again. 

Would she remember me? Would she want to see me? My head swam with doubts, but I pushed them aside, fighting back against the weeds that weighed heavy across my chest and arms. Struggling and wiggling free, I began to run, breathing deep, almost giddy at the free, fresh air all around me. 

I couldn’t possibly be alive, but as I ran, chased by the vines and dripping with sweat and adrenaline, it felt almost as good. 

The gate got closer and closer as I ran, inviting me in, and I bolted towards it, collapsing against the cold iron for a moment as I reached it, before scrambling to my feet and rushing through it. 

As I stepped through the creaking gate, a chill settled into my bones, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had entered a place I wasn’t meant to be. Something wasn’t right. The garden, stretched before me like a forgotten realm, shrouded in an eerie, suffocating silence.

This wasn’t what Celia had been promising people. God knows I’d heard her go on about it enough. Even the prison I’d been kept hadn’t been this bad. 

Their precious garden looked like it was dying. 

The air was thick with the scent of decay, a nauseating blend of rotting vegetation and something more sinister, something that made my skin crawl. The once vibrant flowers were now wilted and blackened, their petals hanging limply as if mourning their own demise. Thorns, thick and sharp as daggers, jutted out from the twisted, gnarled vines that seemed to move and writhe like serpents in the dim, flickering light.

The path beneath my feet was barely visible, overrun with a tangle of weeds and brambles that clawed at my ankles as I walked. The ground squelched with each step, as if it were alive and hungry, eager to swallow me whole. I glanced around, heart pounding, and noticed the grotesque, twisted shapes of the trees that loomed overhead. Their branches, bare and skeletal, reached out like the bony fingers of the dead, casting shifting shadows on the ground.

In the distance, I could hear the faint, haunting whisper of the wind as it wound its way through the garden, carrying with it the ghostly echoes of long-forgotten voices. Every rustle of leaves, every snap of a twig sent chills right through me. 

A dilapidated fountain stood at the centre of the garden, its once majestic stone now cracked and crumbling. The water within was stagnant and murky, a sickly green that glowed faintly under the pale, sickle moon. The statue at its heart, a figure of a woman, was marred and broken, her eyes hollow and staring, her expression frozen in a silent scream as tears fell from the stony, solemn eyes.

She had grown. Taller than I remembered, but still, unmistakably my kin. Even in stone, and so many years older, I recognised my little girl. 

I knelt beside it, my heart heavy and hurting. 

I could feel the weight of the garden pressing in on me, a malevolent presence that seemed to pulse with every beat of my heart. The air grew colder, the shadows deeper, and I knew, deep in my bones, that something was wrong.

Desperate to escape, I struggled back to my feet and turned to leave, but the path seemed to twist and shift, leading me deeper into the nightmarish landscape. Panic rose in my throat as the garden closed in around me, and I realised that this sinister place had no intention of letting me go.

“April will be joining us soon.” Came cheerful voices all around me. I turned around, over and over, trying to find them, calling out for clarity, but already knowing what they meant. 

It wasn’t enough to have her service and dedication on Earth. They wanted her in this place, forever. 

Soon, she’d be dead, just like the browning leaves that swept around my feet. Like me. 

I don’t have much of nothin’, but I stood before the trees and I offered myself in her place. Did I have a soul left to offer? I don’t know, but I had to try. I fell to my knees and I begged. I don’t beg, as a rule. I’m a proud man, but I did it for her. 

There was silence. Even the wind went away for a moment, humbled and hiding as she stepped forward. I had only seen glimpses of her once or twice, when she stopped by to enjoy my torture, but now, she towered above me. Leaves and petals spread all across her body, each, seemingly alive, but clinging onto existence with everything that they had. Her long dark hair was stringy, sticking to her face as she struggled towards me. 

“Will you serve us?” I didn’t know what she wanted from me, but I nodded. I hadn’t exactly had an ideal gig before, struggling under all those leaves and such, so if it meant saving my daughter, then anything else she had in mind couldn’t be worse. 

Again, I was wrong. There’s a lot of that goin’ around, you know. 

All night long, for the rest of time, I will walk these fields, dropping my seeds, sinking my boots deep into the dusty earth, and waiting. It has to grow. This garden is going to thrive someday soon, and when it does, Invierno’s strength will return. They’re happy with the trade. I give to the garden, and the garden gives back to me. As long as it grows, April will be safe. My soul slips away, one seed at a time, but I’m doing it for her. It’s just gotta grow.

I don’t know that there is much of me left. I don’t know that I had much of me left to begin with when I made the trade. I can feel it, you know. When I lose myself. I keep having to repeat things I know. Picture my memories. Say my name again and again. 

My name is Christopher James Jefferson. I was born in Van Horn, Texas on the… On the… 

My name is Christopher James… something. I was born in… well, somewhere. On the…

My name is… 

Just gotta keep walking. 

Gotta get these seeds in the ground, you see. 

Gotta do it all for her. 

Again and again. Never wavering. Never taking a different step. Always on the same path. One doomed foot in front of the other, keeping my eyes and my hat low, hoping that they will keep their promise.